Welcome Halkin and Horn

With a new year come new names and fresh ideas to the pages of the Forward. I am pleased to announce the addition of two columnists who join the estimable list of writers contributing monthly to our opinion section. For me, there’s a personal joy in announcing these new colleagues. I’ll explain.

I remember reading Hillel Halkin’s “Letter to an American Jewish Friend: A Zionist’s Polemic” shortly after it was published in 1977, and was struck by the power of his argument and the loftiness of his ideals. Since that first book, Hillel has written four others, translated numerous works, and contributed to publications in the United States and Israel.

From 1993 to 1996, Hillel wrote a weekly column for the Forward called “Israel Diary,” in which he commented on the news by getting involved in the stories. (He claims to be the first Israeli ever arrested by the Palestinian Authority.) I don’t expect his new stint with the Forward will cause him to get in trouble with the police, but I know he will offer incisive, smart and challenging opinion from the Israel he knows and loves so well, and it’s a privilege to have his name on our pages again.

I first met Jordana Horn when she was a student at the University of Pennsylvania and I was running the op-ed pages for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Now she’s an accomplished writer and editor — former New York bureau chief of the Jerusalem Post, contributing editor to the Jewish parenting site Kveller. com and a freelance writer for numerous national publications. And she’s working on a novel. Did I mention that she also has four young children?

Jordana has written for the Forward’s news, arts and opinion sections periodically over the past few years. Now she brings her insights and her humanity each month to our op-ed page.

Seems to me that the message is: If you stay in journalism long enough, the people you once read and once worked with come back into your life. And now, into yours, too.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.

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Jane Eisner, a pioneer in journalism, became editor-in-chief of the Forward in 2008, the first woman to hold the position at the influential Jewish national news organization. Under her leadership, the Forward readership has grown significantly and has won numerous regional and national awards for its original journalism, in print and online.

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